Put the heat on Congress

Our opinion: Congress can’t just refuse to to pass an unemployment extender or meaningful jobs legislation and expect the economy, or its ratings, to magically improve.

Here’s a spring break activity for a Congress that can’t bring itself to help the estimated 4.3 million long-term unemployed Americans: Go and personally explain what the holdup is, to each and every one of them.

That’s about 8,000 people for each senator and representative, more than enough to fill the time during a two-week taxpayer-paid vacation.

They could explain, while they’re drawing paychecks of $3,346 a week, why they’re so reluctant, especially in the Republican-controlled House, to extend unemployment benefits for people who can’t find a job in this economy — who, even if this bill passed, would see an average benefit of just $300 a week.

They could explain why, after the Senate Democrats and Republicans met the demand for spending cuts to offset the unemployment extender cost, the House GOP changed the rules and said it now had to come with a new jobs plan, too.

House Speaker John Boehner and his members could also explain how approving the Keystone XL pipeline and scaling back the Affordable Care Act, qualify as a genuine jobs plan. They could explain exactly how insuring fewer Americans makes people more economically secure, and how Keystone XL helps the economy when an independent study at Cornell University determined that the project could actually destroy more jobs than it generates.

We don’t disagree that paying out unemployment benefits endlessly is not a viable long-term strategy. But ripping the safety net out from under millions of people is hardly a sound economic policy, attempts by conservatives in Congress to make it sound like one notwithstanding.

To be sure, the House GOP has offered a jobs training bill; the problem is, that’s just one facet of what needs to be done. Yet since 2011, when President Barack Obama offered a comprehensive, $447 billion job-creation package, Republicans have done nothing but balk, block and obsess on Obamacare.

So much could be done, especially for those for whom the America dream has gone on hiatus.

The nation could be fixing its roads, bridges and other infrastructure, stimulating the economy and doing work that must be done anyway if the country is to remain a global economic force.

Congress could be working to overhaul the tax code, removing the incentives for U.S. companies to send jobs overseas and stash profits abroad.

It could be rewriting the tax laws to encourage real investment, not just the accumulation of profits by moving money around.

These are not new ideas; the very people now in Congress have been running on such issues for years.

Yet listen to Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., a House deputy whip, on the issue of unemployment benefits, and apparently so much more: “I don’t think there is a great sense of pressure on our members.”